Pre-K-THXBYE.

So I'm p. much hyperventilating.

Because tomorrow Maya starts at the Cesspool school again. She'll be in Pre-K this year, not just preschool. Kid is grown' up. Sniff.

However. This only means one thing to me: We will all get sick within hours of her playing with blocks, coloring with pens, or sharing books at reading time. We will all come down with horrible cold and flu (and small baby tiny precious blonde blue-eyed God Jesus please help us not catch the dreaded stomach flu or the trots or Captain Trips or Rotavirus). And the best part of knowing that Maya and we will all get sick? Is that this shall continue twice a fortnight until the end of time.

If you recall, Maya went though her first day of school before, last September. I was proud of her, worried for her, and incredibly fucking scared of the germs. Oh and of my child being accosted and tortured. But mostly, I am ashamed to admit, the germs.

And then if you also remember, as expected, Maya promptly got sick like the dog in my entry entitled "Threat Level: Midnight."

It had been a new beginning, a new adventure, something for her to look forward to: Look, back then, at my kid all excited to be a groweds-up!! Going to gee-dee SCHOOL!!

BUT. See, Maya has been on what I like to call a "hiatus," taking a sabbatical if you will (pursuing her Ph.D in Play-Doh 101 and her masters in Dirt-Sculpture-Making for the Under Five Crowd, and learning in depth the philosophy behind how to play XBox's Harry Potter and Spelunky.

She was taken out of school, as of last Christmas because (1) she wasn't loving and appreciating school (a gentler way of phrasing her frothing split-pea-spewing beard-rending sackcloth-tearing fits whenever we woke her up at 7:30 am to go to school); (2) it was very pricey and we wanted to save money, especially on a school my kid didn't love; and (3) MOTHERFUCKING COLDS IN OUR MOTHERFUCKING NOSES EVERY MOTHERFUCKING WEEK.

It was just unreal. I couldn't take another second of it. The baby, who was only 4-5 months old at the time, was sick constantly, once for six weeks straight. And she was so new and so fragile and did not handle colds well, getting so congested that I literally thought she'd choke and die in the middle of the night. Silently. Once, on our way to a restaurant to enjoy a little family time, we skipped our plans for a meal and made a quick, last-miunte detour to the local ER because she was struggling so hard to breathe and it sounded like she was fighting to get any air in and was going to suffocate any minute. I was panicking every second of that 10-minute drive. Fuck. I don't know how many people get this, but the common cold can be scary shit.

And might I interject, that since removing Maya from school before Christmas, we have not caught one single solitary cold or flu. Not even a sniffle. Not even a throat tickle. Not one. Nothing. So it's all those filthy little bastards who do not know to wash their hand after the use the potty and who do not sneeze into their sleeve and who dig for gold up they got-damn noses and and then offer my child a bite of their Bunny-Grahams.

---

I like to think now at almost a year and a half years of age, the baby Naomi is stronger and heartier (God knows this child is build like a truck (or built like my one true love, Edgar Martinez)).

Thighs like what. what. what.

And Naomi is so strong and determined and hearty and wily and mischievous and just a ball of fire than I think she can fight off colds more easily, or deal with them more easily as them come. Well, part of me logically thinks so and the other part of me is screaming, "We will have a nicely lovely playdate with some favorite neighbors and enjoy some apple juice and Goldfish and then Naomi will chew on her playmate's Sophie the Giraffe and then catch a cold and will fill head to toe with mucous and die. Dead. Dead of rhinopharyngitis."

Sorry, you played with a kids' favorite rubber toy and now you shall die of dystentery. Fuck you, Sophie.

Or that Maya will have come home from a lovely day at school fingerpainting and baking cookies and playing telephone and cooking in the play kitchen and making macaroni art, and the she will breathe in the vicinity of the baby who will instantly perish.

Because every other time that Naomi has caught one of Maya's (trillions of) colds, she got incredibly sick and churned out snot the way the Amish churn out butter and caught horrible double ear infections and sinus infections like it was her job. Every time. So yeah. Who knows if the baby is stronger now or not. Time will tell.

But still. Maya is off hiatus, is beginning Pre-K tomorrow, and will be bringing home God only knows what kinds of diseases. I can't say I'm prepared for the Onslaught of Sick, but I know it's coming. I know it's coming. I'm trying to steel myself for the inevitable, but that doesn't mean I don't feel like taking two handfuls of Xanax, 27 Klonopin, and two bottles of our very best $3 red wine to try to soothe my worries.

Light a candle for me, child.

Is This the Alanis Morissette Definition of "Ironic"?

And.........wait for it........we're all sick.



That's right. We finally get out of the house, do some fun shit, touch some fun things, and all come down with nasty colds. Who would have thought, it figures.

Take-home lesson: Never, ever, ever leave home again.

Mr. Hughes had the right idea.

...Relief??

I'll have you know that my baby kicked her cold's bum-bum because she is....

SUPER NOEY!!!

. . .

Know what's weird?

Once Maya actually came down with a cold, and Naomi and I immediately caught it, it's almost like...like I could relax. I mean, I get so afraid that the kids or my husband or I will get sick that I spend all my time thinking about it, but now that we actually got effing sick, I could stop most of the all-consuming anxiety. (Athough, for the duration of the cold, the anxiety is contained to worrying about Naomi choking on mucous in the night--that fear doesn't just go away.)

I'll tell you a story. Awhile back, when Naomi was only about a month old, I caught a cold. A really bad, lingering one. It started with a terrible sore throat, and progressed to a snotty runny nose and a terrible cough. I was in full blown panic mode. Definitely Code Red. I mean, we are talking none more red.

I was so afraid of getting my tiny baby sick, that I wore a mask. WORE A FUCKING FACE MASK, for more than a week and a half. And not just the flimsy-paper doctor kind of mask, but the full-on N95-1860 particle respirator, which--

"...meets both OSHA requirements and CDC guidelines for TB exposure control. The model 1860 may be used during laser surgery, electrocautery, and other procedures involving powered medical instruments. Intended to help reduce wearer exposure to airborne particles in a size range of 0.1 to > 10.0 microns generated during these procedures. Fluid resistant to provide .99% BFE against microorganisms and help reduce potential contamination and exposure of the wearer to the spray, spatter, and aerosol of blood and body fluids.inst micron-size particles. CDC recommended to protect against avian and swine flu."

You know, the ones I bought when I was certain everyone was going to die dead of H1N1?

Anyway, when I caught that first cold, I wore it every time I fed the baby or held her or leaned over her to change her diaper, and after that first week and a half, I let myself take it off but still held it briefly over my face every time I had to cough. (The cough lingered.) And it was really fucking annoying. It's hard to breathe through those things. They are THICK. Pray to the Patron Saint of Effluvia that we don't ever have to wear them to protect against Zombie Flu or something.

Not only did I wear a mask, but my husband slept in the baby's room with her, instead of having her in the bassinet in our room next to me. I had to go like two precious weeks without kissing her. And I was fanatical about washing. I mean more than usual. If I touched my nose, I washed. If I ate and my hands touched my mouth, I washed. If I breathed, I washed. If I coughed into my elbow, I'd go take a hydrochloric acid bath. You get the point. I was living in terror. But, my efforts paid off. My tiny newborn did not catch my cold.

So now that we're past that fiasco, and Naomi did catch this new cold? While it broke my heart seeing her too sniffly to even suck her binky, and seeing her mouth-breathing like a jerk, I just kind of let go of some of the stress. Because what's done is done--we caught it. We got sick. I didn't have to try anymore to have her not get THIS cold.

I caught it, but she caught it too, so I didn't have to go around wearing a gas mask and a HazMat suit and spritzing bleach about.

But seriously, doesn't this poor sick baby break your heart?

Being sick sucks. Having sick babies sucks. But this cold, we couldn't avoid.

Doesn't mean I'm not going to go into full gas-mask and HazMat mode when there's a Zombie Flu outbreak.

Relief?

I'll have you know that my baby kicked her cold's bum-bum because she is....

SUPER NOEY!!!

. . .

Know what's weird?

Once Maya actually came down with a cold, and Naomi and I immediately caught it, it's almost like...like I could relax. I mean, I get so afraid that the kids or my husband or I will get sick that I spend all my time thinking about it, but now that we actually got effing sick, I could stop most of the all-consuming anxiety. (Athough, for the duration of the cold, the anxiety is contained to worrying about Naomi choking on mucous in the night--that fear doesn't just go away.)

I'll tell you a story. Awhile back, when Naomi was only about a month old, I caught a cold. A really bad, lingering one. It started with a terrible sore throat, and progressed to a snotty runny nose and a terrible cough. I was in full blown panic mode. Definitely Code Red. I mean, we are talking none more red.

I was so afraid of getting my tiny baby sick, that I wore a mask. WORE A FUCKING FACE MASK, for more than a week and a half. And not just the flimsy-paper doctor kind of mask, but the full-on N95-1860 particle respirator, which--

"...meets both OSHA requirements and CDC guidelines for TB exposure control. The model 1860 may be used during laser surgery, electrocautery, and other procedures involving powered medical instruments. Intended to help reduce wearer exposure to airborne particles in a size range of 0.1 to > 10.0 microns generated during these procedures. Fluid resistant to provide .99% BFE against microorganisms and help reduce potential contamination and exposure of the wearer to the spray, spatter, and aerosol of blood and body fluids.inst micron-size particles. CDC recommended to protect against avian and swine flu."

You know, the ones I bought when I was certain everyone was going to die dead of H1N1?

Anyway, when I caught that first cold, I wore it every time I fed the baby or held her or leaned over her to change her diaper, and after that first week and a half, I let myself take it off but still held it briefly over my face every time I had to cough. (The cough lingered.) And it was really fucking annoying. It's hard to breathe through those things. They are THICK. Pray to the Patron Saint of Effluvia that we don't ever have to wear them to protect against Zombie Flu or something.

Not only did I wear a mask, but my husband slept in the baby's room with her, instead of having her in the bassinet in our room next to me. I had to go like two precious weeks without kissing her. And I was fanatical about washing. I mean more than usual. If I touched my nose, I washed. If I ate and my hands touched my mouth, I washed. If I breathed, I washed. If I coughed into my elbow, I'd go take a hydrochloric acid bath. You get the point. I was living in terror. But, my efforts paid off. My tiny newborn did not catch my cold.

So now that we're past that fiasco, and Naomi did catch this new cold? While it broke my heart to see her too sniffly to even suck her binky, and mouth-breathing like a jerk, I just kind of let go of some of the stress. Because what's done is done--we caught it. We got sick. I didn't have to try anymore to have her not get THIS cold.

I caught it, but she caught it too, so I didn't have to go around wearing a gas mask and a HazMat suit and spritzing bleach about.

But seriously, doesn't this poor sick baby break your heart?

Being sick sucks. Having sick babies sucks. But this cold, we couldn't avoid.

Doesn't mean I'm not going to go into full gas-mask and HazMat mode when there's a Zombie Flu outbreak.

Threat Level: Midnight

Nah, I'm not really sorry. And my opinions on the Hygiene Hypothesis remain the same. But I do have to report in:

MY KID GOT SICK.

She has spent one day in preschool in her entire life, and she is now sick. Sneezing and stuffy. Awesome.

But I don't believe it's because she's a Bubble Kid. Since after all, even non-Bubble-Kids like Dar's get sick their first day, which has been a recent topic of discussion. :(

I guess it's just as a person who does not have OCD recently wrote: "Schools are a cesspool of germ, disease and horror. And that's just the staff room. Throw kids into the mix and you might as well just wrap yourself up in a bubble and stay home."

But fuck, man. Really? The first day? Now I know just how Darlena felt, except hers was Times Two.

(Also; I'm sure, positively sure, that no one out there is thinking, "Serves her right for being such a germ-freak," right? Right? Because it's my kid who's suffering. So this doesn't "serve anyone right." But I'm sure none of you would be so cruel as to think that.)

So now all I can do is pray to the Patron Saint of Five Month Olds and ask for mercy that Naomi not get sick.   :/

Panic Threat Level: Red.

Who am I kidding. Make that, Threat Level: Midnight.

Origins, III.

For the most part, I am comfortable with my OCD. Like I've said, it makes life ridiculously difficult sometimes, and living with a constant level of extreme anxiety isn't my favorite thing. But the reason I am mostly comfortable with it is that I believe I'm right. I believe there are germs on things, and I believe they can make you sick, and that is all I need to know. So I like to wash those germs off. End of story, right?

And anyway, what's so hard about washing your damn hands? Give it a try. You might like it. It tickles!

The cold/flu phobia, I am far less comfortable living with. I feel like surface germs, germs that get on your hands, are, for the most part, something I can attempt to control. If I want clean hands, I wash them. If I want clean carpets, no shoes in the house. If Maya drops a cookie at the park, we throw it away (no three-second rule in this house, you mud duck!). If Maya plays at the park, we employ heavy amounts of hand sanitizer. Simple! (Well, simple except inside my brain, wherein it is screaming panic-ridden obscenities. If my brain could sweat, it would be at all times in a cold one.) But I can't control the fact that we breathe other people's air. And to be constantly afraid of breathing in cold germs or that flu effluvia is going to enter my eyeballs (see previous entry), this is too much anxiety, even for this OCDer. I have no control over breathing in germs. I can still wash my hands, but I still have to breathe, now don't I. NOW DON'T I? I ask you. I can't walk around holding my breath and looking down forever, can I. NOW CAN I? I demand an answer.

So except for this "being deathly afraid of colds" part, basically I am actually OK with being OCD, because I don't think I'm wrong. There are other types of OCD that don't make sense to me personally, like incessant counting, not stepping on cracks, rituals, needing to do things a certain number of times, etc. They don't make sense to me because they are not based on things that can really happen. If you step on a crack, your mother will not die. There is no reason to count every step you take, every blonde you pass, every chew of your food. If you don't lock and unlock your door 37 times in a row exactly, nothing bad will happen. But if you use a payphone, you get all kinds of shit on your hands. If you touch the ketchup bottle at a restaurant, you get all kinds of shit on your hands. If you touch the pen used to sign your name on your receipt, you get all kinds of shit on your hands. And some of that shit can make you sick like the dog. And I don't want that shit on my hands, and I don't want it in my house, and I don't want it on my babies. So I wash. Fine.

But lately I find myself with new little tics, new little compulsions, and it freaks my shit right out. Because isn't germ OCD and flu phobia enough?

See, there's one more Thing I Do. It's in the realm of the "things that don't make sense" that I listed above. Like how there's no reason to check 40 got-damn times that your stove is off, when you KNOW IT IS. But I am beginning to do things like that. Well, one thing in particular. But once again, there is an Origin.

ORIGIN #3: CHECKING THAT THE BACK SLIDING-GLASS DOOR 

IS LOCKED...OVER AND OVER AND OVER.

Years ago, I heard a horrifying story about a young girl who was taken from her bed, kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered. Her name was Jessica Lunsford. (Warning, graphic details.) Her abductor and murderer entered through an unlocked door in the middle of the night. I also heard a similar story about a younger child, I think she was around age three, also abducted in the middle of the night, and her abductor, too, entered through an unlocked back sliding glass door. Again, kidnapped, raped, killed. I have never been able to get these stories out of my mind. They haunt me.

So I always make sure that our back sliding glass door is locked. You feel me dawg?

Except that sometimes I forgot, and my husband never checks, and sometimes my mom would leave it unlocked while babysitting, etc. And every time I'd find it unlocked the next morning, a vise inside me would squeeze tighter and tighter, and my brain would break out into that cold sweat, and the panic and the obsession grew. I knew I was the only one who would check the goddamn back door to make sure it was locked. So I checked. And I checked. And the obsession started to take over.

Right now, as it stands, come nighttime, I will tug on the back door to make sure it is locked. It is. I will check email one last time, get a drink of water from the kitchen, and pass the back door on my way to the bedroom. Then I will stop, go back, and check the door again. But you only checked it two minutes ago, I tell myself. Jo, you KNOW it is locked. Sometimes on my way to bed, I try to continue to walk to my bedroom. But it's like you're in a dream where your legs won't move or you're stuck in concrete. You can't lift them. I cannot continue to my bedroom. I must check it again. I MUST. I go back and I give the door a tug. Locked. Of course it was locked. I had already checked. And the thing is, I had also already checked it five time previously, within the last couple of hours, even before I was ready to go to bed. Sometimes I check it every time I pass it, which is approximately exactly 9347543985 times a day.

So now, my compulsions are starting to edge into what I consider The Unreasonable. The Irrational. (Even though I know that 99.9% of my readers already fully believe that ALL my tics and compulsions and behaviors are totally unreasonable and irrational: to you, they are absurd at least, harmful and dangerous at most.) But I would agree, this thing is getting a little out of control. The door thing, it freaks me out. One check should be enough.

I know the door is locked.
I know the door is locked.
I know the door is locked.
I know the door is locked.
I know the door is locked.
I know the door is locked.
I know the door is locked.
I know the door is locked.

I check it again anyway.

But you see, there was an Origin. Jessica Lunsford. And the other tiny little girl whose name I wish I could remember. One unlocked back door, one time, one night, that particular night, that is all it took to lead to unspeakable tragedy. And now, having daughters of my own, one the same age as the younger child who was murdered, the fear never leaves my mind.

So now my very rational* germ phobia has a new pal: irrational checking.

*(Rational in my own, and yeah, I know, ONLY my own, opinion.)

I will continue to check. Because I can't not. This is what OCD is. But again, I just wanted to explain to you how some of these things come to be. So you can understand that not all bizarre compulsive behavior is just because someone is crazy-go-nuts. Sometimes we have reasons. This is another of my reasons. And you can't just tell someone like me, "Stop it." Because I can't.

Next up: MORE FUNNY SHIT BECAUSE THIS IS GETTING BORING AND DEPRESSING.

Origins, Part Deux: The Sequel.

And now on to the next origin of some of my bizarre-to-you phobias:

ORIGIN #2: WHY I AM ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED 

OF THE FUCKING COMMON COLD.

When I was pregnant with my first baby (actually, my second; I lost the first baby, but that is yet another story for yet another place. Well, no, same place, but...never mind.)...OK. So when I was pregnant with this baby, I had a terribly difficult pregnancy. Fear of another miscarriage (which was decidedly UNHELPED when I fell down the stairs at 6 weeks pregnant), intense 24/7 all-day "morning" sickness, early-labor scares (contractions, cervical changes, the whole nine), terrific pain caused by as-of-then undiagnosed Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, etc. So pregnancy sucked anyway. I was my usual careful handwasher throughout, but I worked in a place where almost no one washed their hands, and people always came to work when sick.*


*There is a special place in hell reserved for people who come to work sick, especially when they work closely with pregnant women.


If I may digress for a moment, the reason I knew that almost no one there washed their hands was because we worked in a building where for nine years I was lucky enough to have the office directly adjacent to the bathroom. The thin-walled bathroom. I could hear many things I never want to hear again. And of course, there was the lovely wafting of bathroom odors every time someone exited and strolled, 8 ounces lighter, past my open office door. So not only could I hear those sounds, along with the toilet and urinal flushing, but I could hear water running, the soap dispenser being pressed (seriously, I could), and I could hear the sound of our ancient, loud paper-towel crankyyankythinger. It was the kind with a lever that you pressed down over and over again to get your scroll of paper towels out. As I recall, about 12 depressions of the crankyyanky lever were sufficient to get the proper amount of paper towel.


Well. I'm sure you can see where this is going. Someone would pass my office, enter the adjacent bathroom, do their bidness. I and my keen ear (finely attuned to these particular sounds) would wait anxiously, so anxiously...but I'd say about 89% of the time, the person would exit without the precious sounds of water running nor the crankyyankythinger making its sound. Thus, absolute proof that they did not wash. And even worse was when that rank scent of bidness, that cloud of putrefaction, wafted after them. So not only did I know that they had not washed after doing their bidness, they had not washed after doing their NUMBER TWO bidness. Fuckers, all. You can see why I Lysoled the hell out of my keyboard and mouse on a regular basis, both because people sometimes used my computer and because I had to touch things around the office building that Nonwashers had touched. I also Lysoled the hell out of every touchable surface in the bathroom every day, and frequently had to refill the soap dispenser that had remained empty for God knows how long. I should have gotten janitorial pay.


I think one person caught on to the fact that I could hear the paper towel dispenser through the walls. My boss. He was always a Nonwasher, but at some point the following started happening: He would enter the bathroom; 20 seconds later I would hear the flush of the urinal; and then I would IMMEDIATELY hear the paper towel dispenser lever being yankcrankered. TWO TIMES. Two yanks. Two cranks. Halfheartedly, to boot. The thing is? Two yanks would expel approximately 2 centimeters of paper towel. This is of no use to anyone. Then the door would open 0.5 seconds later. So I know he was doing the yankycranky for my benefit, to try to fool me into thinking he washed. But Mister Bossman Sir, I am no fool.


OK, back to our regularly scheduled phobia.


Toward the end of my pregnancy, which was in October (hello flu season!!), everyone in the office was sick.* In overlapping schedules. First it was Christy and Sam and Lisa who were sick for a week. Halfway through that week, Bridgette and Ramona and Sara were sick for a week. Halfway through that week, Rachel and Danni and Theresa were sick. And so forth. And they all came into my office every 2.5 seconds for some godforsaken reason or another. After they left, I would spray Lysol into the air in the meek hopes that it would kill the breath they had breathed toward me. And I went through a vat of Purell weekly.


*Assholes.

Alas. My attempts at good health hygiene were no match for 8998347543 colds and influenzas running rampant. My drastically lowered immune system (thanks, pregnancy!), gave up the ghost. I got sick.


I had gotten my flu shot on Tuesday. It didn't have enough time to work. I was already feeling kind of crappy, but then again, I always felt crappy (thanks, pregnancy!). Late the following Thursday (well, actually in the wee hours of Friday morning), I called work and left a message that I was sick and would not be coming (because I am not an asshole). I always hated to call in sick, especially on a Friday, lest they think I just wanted a long weekend. But I was DEFinitely sick by now. I had spent all of Thursday evening and night coughing my lungs out. This was a quickly worsening cold/flu, and it pounded me hard and fast (twss).


Friday morning at about 10:15 am, I woke up sick like the dog. As I went potty for the zillionth time since the night before, I sat there and coughed and coughed. I coughed so hard I thought I would break my brain or rupture my eyeballs.


Well, I didn't rupture my eyeballs, but I did rupture my amniotic sac. As I stood up, I found that my water had broken. From coughing that hard. What's amusing (?) is that, had I opted to go in to work that day (like an asshole), my water would have broken on the drive over, since every day I was in the car driving to work from 10-10:30 am. Instead, it broke and leaked all over my bathroom floor. Gallons and gallons, I swear.


I was early, only 37 weeks along, but thank God I could be considered basically full-term. Still, that baby should have baked for three more weeks, and here we were, with premature rupture of membranes (PROM).


The coughing so hard led to this spontaneous PROM, but since my water hadn't broken because I was, y'know, READY to have a baby, I did not go into labor. Instead, I had to immediately go to the hospital (instead of going into labor naturally, then laboring at home for a long time, like I wanted) for antibiotics, since I was GBS+. Once there, I tried everything I could to get labor started. Walking endlessly, rocking in a chair, nipple stimulation *tweak tweak!!*, but nothing got contractions going. They gave me several hours to try, but since my water had already broken, there was a window in which I had to deliver: 24 hours. Not everyone agrees with this window, but I did, so I was OK with that assessment. The doctors knew that even if labor HAD begun, it could still take many many hours to actually deliver, but since labor hadn't even begun whatsoever, we needed to resort to pitocin to get shit up and moving. I had never wanted pitocin. I had never wanted interventions. I never wanted drugs. I wanted as natural a birth as possible. I had also wanted to NOT HAVE THE FUCKING FLU. Bygones.


The pitocin ended up working, thank God, and contractions happened and dilation happened and all that shit, but the added pain from the pitocin made labor unbearable. After eleven hours of hard labor (hard anyway, but made harder by pitocin, and made hardest by having the worst cold of my life), and only being 4 cm dilated with 6 to go, that was it. Epidural time. Another thing I never, ever wanted. 


Eventually the time came to deliver. And guess what I got to do? Deliver a baby while coughing my brains out. Sick, sick, sick like the dog, and trying to push a human being out my vaj. Good times. Good times.


And here's more TMI, since you are at the edge of your chair begging, "Jo, please, tell me more about your crotch!!" I had an awful second-degree perineal tear, and my cold lasted another month (I kid you not), so every time I felt my lungs tickle, I had to cross my legs and press them together as tightly as I could, say a prayer to the Patron Saint of Torn Vajayjays, and hope for the best as I coughed my soul out. Needless to say, I had one sore crotch. YOU try coughing with stitches in your whatnot.


Anyway, back to the birth. When the baby was born, she had trouble breathing. Thirty-seven weeks may be full-term, but it isn't full enough term for a lot of babies. She was chalky, a little listless, and full of fluid in her lungs. Her Apgars were only 7 and 7. The plan was for them to place the baby on my tummy and do all the standard observations there, and let me hold and nurse her, but instead they had to take her away for deep lung suctioning. I didn't get to have her back for almost an HOUR. (And as a sidenote, I am convinced that this lung suctioning was so traumatic to my minutes-old infant daughter that it gave her an oral aversion for life. She has always had issues with eating, with gagging, etc. As a baby, she hated and tried to refuse the bottle because I think the nipple deeply in her mouth practically gave her PTSS. Flashbacks to when they shoved a plastic tube miles down her throat.) Can you blame her?


She also never nursed well--couldn't latch correctly, was wildly jaundiced and therefore incredibly sleepy, among other things. Yet another side effect of being born not-quite-ready. So we were never able to establish a breastfeeding relationship, and I ended up pumping exclusively for seven months. Pumping was the bane of my existence. The failure to nurse caused me deep depression, as did the getting-up-round-the-clock-to-pump-even-when-my-child-was-sleeping-through-the-night. My relationship with my baby was affected, because I couldn't hold her or play with her as much as I wanted, since I always had to pump.


ALL THIS, because some fucker had come to work sick and given me a cold.


...


How is it that I constantly digress so deeply?


OK, so. Phobia:


Three years later I got pregnant again with little Naomi. And now, in addition to the myriad fears I already separately dealt with (miscarriage, birth defects, listeria poisoning, umbilical cord accidents, oh I could go on and on), I had to contend with a brand-new (or  at least drastically worsened) phobia: Colds. Why? Because I was afraid I would catch one and cough and my water would break. It was that simple. It wasn't an unfounded fear, because that did happen to me before.


I was afraid my water would break at 10 weeks and I would miscarry. I was afraid my water would break at 22 weeks, juuuust before the baby was viable and the baby would die. I was afraid my water would break at 24 weeks, the point of viability but at which point your surviving baby will likely have incredibly severe health and mental problems. I was afraid my water would break at 30 weeks. I was afraid it would break at 33 weeks. I was even afraid it would break at 37 weeks, "full term," lest we go through more issues like last time. I was afraid. I was just so afraid.


On top of it all, I was pregnant once again during and throughout flu season, and everyone around me was sick with horrible flus. Not only was I afraid of catching the common cold and coughing my baby out too early, but I was terrified of the flu. Inside my head, a battle raged: to get the flu shot or not?


Because I had contacted Dr. Google a few too many times, I'd read way too many horror stories of women who insist the flu shot was directly responsible for their miscarriage or fetal demise. Now, I understand--I understand--the huge number of women who get the flu shot while pregnant, and they and their child are just. fine. I get this. And the flu shot can, duh, prevent the flu, and the flu can be incredibly dangerous to pregnant women and their babies. So this was one half of the internal battle that raged. The flu shot could save me from catching swine flu and (1) getting ridiculously sick, far sicker than most people, because of a lowered immune system (thanks, pregnancy); (2) not being able to use any effective medications to achieve symptom relief, since almost nothing is safe to take during pregnancy; or (3) uh, dying.


The other half the battle was all the information I had gathered on how unsafe the flu shot was. I read through all the personal stories, even found medical information on respectable websites that recommended against it. Not to mention, I couldn't help but wonder why the flu shot is not recommended for babies under 6 months of age, but it is OK for fetuses to get? I was just too scared. 


One day, I'd wake up thinking, "Listen, this isn't worth the risk of catching the flu. Flu is srs bsns for preggos. Flu can kill me and thus my baby. Or at least leave me devastatingly ill and thus threaten the health of my baby as well. I'm going in first thing tomorrow for my shot." Then like half an hour later, I'd be all, "FUCK THE FLU SHOT, there is no way in hell I am risking even the remotest of possibilities that it could cause miscarriage." I just could not do it. I just could not inject something into my body where, if something happened to Naomi, I'd never forgive myself. Back and forth, back and forth my decisions went. I was so torn you cannot believe it. Torn like my poor poor perineum.


I eventually decided on NO FLU SHOT (or rather, the debate kept raging and I kept chickening out of it, up until I delivered in March, when it became a non-issue). But during the pregnancy, I protected myself the best I could--my husband got his shot, my daughter got hers, and my mom got hers as well. We employed an EXTREME REGIMEN of germ-avoidance practices (too embarrassing to detail as of yet). And somehow, no flu. I say somehow, but it was likely due to our excessive handwashing and other such OCD behaviors.


But, friends and worshipers, my point is, this was the origin of my extreme fear of catching even just a cold. I was terrified my water would break. I was terrified to lose my baby. It was incredibly hard to live with that kind of fear, to live in a constant state of anxiety. 


And I was constantly around sick people. Every single time I went to a family gathering, at least one asshole showed up sick. And at my husband's family gatherings, the SAME asshole showed up sick, every.single.time. Birthday parties. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Coughing her brains out. I was not only furious (she knows exactly how phobic I am, not to mention, hello, COMMON SENSE, GET YOU SOME, pregnant woman in the hizzay, don't come over if you're sick like the dog)...not only was I furious, but I was petrified. All I could do was pray to God to keep my unborn safe...and wash my hands.


And BY the grace of God, and the Patron Saint of Pregnant OCDers, I never did get sick. Thank you, dear 8 pounds 6 ounces newborn infant Jesus, don't even know a word yet, learning about His shapes and colors. Thank you. My second daughter was born at a much healthier 39 weeks on the dot. My water broke spontaneously again this time, but not due to being ravaged by sickness. And I DID go into labor on my own, and I did NOT need pitocin, and things were all around just dandy. Except for the excruciating pain. But whatever.


Still. The phobia remains. I don't entirely know why, since I'm not pregnant anymore and thus not afraid of losing my baby (although I AM afraid of my baby getting sick, since Dr. Google yet again has provided me with more horror stories, this time of babies choking to death on their phlegm in the middle of the night). But even now, in the middle of summer, with a healthy, bouncing 4-month-old and healthy, bratty almost 4-year-old, I am afraid. I still live with extreme anxiety. I am still on high alert. If my aforementioned keen ears so much as hear someone cough a mile away, every muscle in my body tenses and I want to hold my breath and run away forever. I still live afraid. Because no one ever said phobias make sense.


...Although, I like to think that mine at least DID make sense, because now you know why, where, and how it began: I just didn't want to lose my precious baby Naomi.